China’s rapid expansion of artificial islands in the South China Sea has alarmed its neighbors and prompted the U.S. to consider using military planes and ships to contest Beijing’s territorial claims. But the building of facilities on rocks or low-lying reefs to strengthen claims to them isn’t a new tactic in East Asia. Japan also has some examples of its own.

Your daily roundup of news from The Wall Street Journal related to Japan:

A war of words broke out Tuesday between Japan and its neighbors after Tokyo made school textbooks hew closer to the official stance on history and added confrontational language to an annual foreign-policy report. Read More »

One hundred and twenty years ago today, China and Japan officially declared war after months conflict over control of Korea, resulting in a rout for Chinese forces. China Real Time took this occasion to talk to Ma Yong, a Japan specialist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences about the First Sino-Japanese War and how it changed China’s trajectory. Edited excerpts after the jump. Read More »

Competing maritime claims in the East China Sea have strained relations and deepened distrust between China and Japan.

The Senkaku/Diaoyu islands –under Japanese administration but also claimed by China — are at the center of the dispute as these two Asian states take a more assertive stance in defending their respective claims.

This is the subject of James Manicom’s new book “Bridging Troubled Waters.” Mr. Manicom, a research fellow in global security at the Canadian think tank the Centre for International Governance Innovation, argues that despite the serious deterioration in relations, the dispute isn’t necessarily destined to spin out of control. China Real Time recently caught up with him. Read More »

In the latest flare-up between China and Japan, each country alleges jets from the other side flew dangerously close in an encounter over the East China Sea. This time, a Chinese aviator appears to have caught at least part of the incident on tape. China’s Defense Ministry on Thursday released video clips purporting to document the incident. Read More »

Tokyo announced last week that U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Japan as a state guest, a formal arrangement that comes with lavish ceremonies and lots of photo ops. On Tuesday, it had more good news: Mr. Obama will stay for three days, not just two as earlier mentioned.

Mr. Obama will arrive in Tokyo next Wednesday and stay until Friday — a coup for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government, which had been pushing for a three-day visit for months. Read More »

August 15, the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II, is always a testy day for regional harmony in Asia, as bitter wartime memories are shared and re-lived, both in Japan and the neighbors it once invaded. In recent weeks, there was concern that tensions could climb particularly high this year because of flare-ups in territorial disputes and disagreements between Japan and other countries over the interpretation of wartime history.

Recent developments suggest the worst may be avoided, thanks to restraint displayed by both China and Japan.

To the relief of Japanese officials, a Hong Kong-based group of anti-Japan activists recently announced it cancelled a plan to land on the East China Sea islands–known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China–which are at the center of a territorial dispute between Tokyo and Beijing. Read More »

China doesn’t dispute Japan’s sovereignty over Okinawa and other islands in the Ryukyu chain, a senior Chinese military official said, dismissing recent commentary on the matter by state-backed academics as scholarly musings.

“Please be assured that China’s position has not changed [on Japan's sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands],” Lt. Gen. Qi Jianguo, deputy chief of general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, told the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security conference in Singapore, Sunday.

His comments come after the Chinese Communist Party’s main propaganda organ, the People’s Daily newspaper, questioned Tokyo’s historical claim on the Ryukyu Islands, which stretch southwest from Japan’s home islands toward Taiwan. The chain includes Okinawa, a piece of land key to the U.S. defense strategy in the Asia Pacific. Read More »

China may have felt it had bigger fish to fry last week when it gave a low-key response to a maritime deal between Japan and Taiwan on access to waters near disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Perhaps China had its attention focused on the volatile Korean peninsula, which was looking unusually unstable and in need of urgent attention. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was on his way to Beijing to huddle with the Chinese to ensure that crisis didn’t get out of hand. And perhaps Beijing felt there was no need to muddy the waters at that point.

Beijing has maintained that low-key stance but it hasn’t been ready to let the fishing issue sink completely from sight.

In a move with significant implications for territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, the Chinese government announced on Sunday that it plans to centralize bureaucratic control over its maritime law enforcement agencies by consolidating them under the State Oceanic Administration and its parent ministry, the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources.

Many analysts—ourselves included—focus heavily on China’s rapidly-developing navy. Yet some of the most profound effects on China’s near-term operations in its maritime neighborhood are likely to emerge from ongoing reforms that put China on a path to creating Asia’s largest coast guard. While further behind in high-end capabilities, China’s civil maritime forces combined currently have nearly as many large-displacement cutters and patrol vessels as Japan’s Coast Guard, the region’s largest and most capable.

About Japan Real Time

Japan Real Time is a newsy, concise guide to what works, what doesn’t and why in the one-time poster child for Asian development, as it struggles to keep pace with faster-growing neighbors while competing with Europe for Michelin-rated restaurants. Drawing on the expertise of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, the site provides an inside track on business, politics and lifestyle in Japan as it comes to terms with being overtaken by China as the world’s second-biggest economy. You can contact the editors at japanrealtime@wsj.com